From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, July 26, 2002 2:40 P.M. EDT

We're Rubber, He's Glue
Taking a compliment can be complicated; when someone says something nice about you, it may give rise to the suspicion that he's just being polite, or trying to butter you up because he wants something. Insults are a purer form of flattery, based as they usually are in genuine emotion. So were we ever flattered to read John Bradley's commentary about this column in the Arab News! It's nothing but ad hominem invective:

The reader must . . . navigate the minefield that is the spiteful ranting of . . . James Taranto, . . . whose earlier career was . . . defined by a complete lack of distinction and achievement. Perhaps Taranto is high on finally having got a platform to publicize his bigoted, right-wing drivel. . . . Taranto, snugly in the driving seat of his massively read website, has been "virtually" crashing it into any and every target he believes shelters his chosen enemy. . . . This is extreme opinion without reason, accountability or responsibility.

While Taranto's bile may exist only in cyberspace, and have only the intellectual capacity of a fifth-rate George W. Bush, this does not mean he is not causing damage down here in the real world. Americans wanting to find out more about the Middle East are likely to take Taranto's twaddle as somehow representative of more than just the author's own perverted self-indulgence. . . .

A piece Taranto published on July 23 is revealing of just how extreme and vitriolic a Zionist he is. . . . When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Taranto is about as biased and unethical an American commentator as you could hope to find. What Sharon is doing on the ground, Taranto is doing in cyberspace.

Bradley also calls us an "insignificant, ghastly little excuse for a journalist," but he neglects to mention that we're ugly and our mother wears army boots. He must be holding his best material in reserve for a future column.

He blasts us for criticizing Saudi Arabia without having firsthand knowledge of the place:

I would bet a billion dollars that Taranto has never been to Saudi Arabia. And I would bet a billion more, judging from the arrogance and self-indulgence of his writings, that he would argue that his ignorance somehow does not matter.

Now, Bradley ought to know a thing or two about visiting Saudi Arabia, since his bio says "John R. Bradley is News Editor at Arab News and author of the Lonely Planet Guide to Saudi Arabia."

There's just one problem: As blogger Joshua Trevino and reader S.E. Brenner point out, there is no Lonely Planet guide to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is nowhere to be found on the Lonely Planet Web site's list of travel guides. Amazon.com lists a Lonely Planet guide to the Arab Gulf states--including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates as well as Saudi Arabia--but it's out of print and was written not by Bradley but by one Gordon Robison. Searches for "John R. Bradley" on the Lonely Planet Web site and catalog turn up nothing.

Maybe Bradley is the uncredited author of the Saudi Arabia section of Lonely Planet's online "Destinations" guide. If so, he doesn't make the place sound very inviting. Here's what LP says about activities in the kingdom:

Saudi Arabia's not exactly a high adrenaline, thrills 'n' spills destination. Desert drives, or "wadi bashing," are popular throughout the country and it's usually fairly easy to find someone in the local expat community who can give you advice on where to go for a desert picnic, but there's not much else on offer. Although Saudi Arabia has plenty of coastline, watersports are pretty much out: it's hard to enjoy a dip when you have to keep covered from neck to ankle.

Even if we were to go to Saudi Arabia, we wouldn't be able to visit the country's most important city, Mecca, which is off limits to non-Muslims under the Wahhabi regime of religious apartheid. Notes LP's attractions page: "Apart from the obvious ideological arguments against breaking this rule"--whatever those might be--"there are checkpoints along the roads to the city to stop non-Muslims from coming too close."

So no thanks for now, Mr. Bradley. We'd love to visit Saudi Arabia, but we'll wait until after the revolution.

State Department vs. Americans
Will the folks at Foggy Bottom ever start acting like Americans? The latest news isn't encouraging. National Review's Deroy Murdock reports that Maura Harty, the likely candidate to replace fired Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan, is no better than Ryan. (Today's Washington Times reports that "a senior State Department official confirmed yesterday that Mr. Bush plans to send Ms. Harty's nomination to the Senate for confirmation.) Reports Murdock:

Harty oversaw the Office of Children's Issues (OCI) from 1994 to 1995 and between August 1999 and April 2001. These parents charge that she allowed "clientitis," or deference to foreign leaders and laws, to trump OCI's vigilant pursuit of the interests of U.S. citizens. . . .

Patricia Roush calls her treatment by OCI "indifference bordering on hostility." The Sacramento-area resident says her daughters, Alia and Aisha (both U.S. citizens), were whisked to Saudi Arabia in January 1986 by their Saudi father, Khalid Gheshayan. Since then, Roush says, State's Saudi desk rarely helped, but repeatedly called the Saudis "our clients." She dismisses OCI as "merely another data collecting, do-nothing, play-dead-at-the-wheel section of the federal government." Roush believes Harty "had many chances to make a difference during her watch at Children's Issues but chose to disregard the cries of America's children." Roush's now-adult daughters remain trapped in Saudi Arabia, after Gheshayan sold them into arranged marriages with Saudi men.

The Times says the decision to appoint Harty "sets up a potentially bruising confirmation battle, with human rights groups and parents of kidnapped children vowing to prevent Ms. Harty from taking the post." Let's hope they succeed.

Arabic Numerals
"There is good news for Palestinians from recent opinion polls," Richard Curtiss of the Arabist Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs writes in the Arab News:

For the first time since last October, a plurality of Americans, 43 percent, said the United States supports Israel too much, while 40 percent said Israel gets the right amount of support. The poll showed only 10 percent felt the United States supports Israel too little, with the remaining percentage unsure.

So let's see if we have this straight: 50% of Americans think the U.S. supports Israel "the right amount" or "too little." Where does Curtiss get the idea that the 43% who disagree are a "plurality"?

BBC Incites Assassination
How's this for responsible journalism? The Jerusalem Post reports that Ali al Rafai, an interviewer for the BBC's Arabic-language service, asked Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Ofir Gandelman "if he thought that, following [Hamas honcho Salah] Shahada's killing, the Palestinians have the right to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon."

Outsmarted Again
Those wily Jews! They're tricking the Arabs into murdering them! So says an editorial in the Dubai-based Gulf News:

Indications are emerging that the Israeli raid on Gaza that killed so many innocents, served a dual purpose. One was the publicly avowed aim: to kill Sheikh Salah Shahada. But the other is far more sinister and, if it is possible, far more serious. For it is being said that Palestinian militants were within hours of declaring a unilateral end to attacks on Israeli citizens. If this had happened, then there would be no reason for Sharon to persist in sending his troops into the Occupied Territories on "routine missions" of slaughter and torture. There would have been no excuse left for Israeli troops to surround the Palestinian President's headquarters and confine him to virtual house arrest for months at a time. Thus, Israel's vicious campaign of elimination of Palestinians, and destruction and occupation of Palestinian land would lose its so-called justification--as seen in Israeli and American eyes.

If this is true, the Palestinians can solve the problem very easily: Just stop murdering Israelis!

Private Eyes
The conventional wisdom says that Israel hurt itself by killing Shehadeh because it will only provoke more suicide attacks. That's silly; it's not as if Hamas ever needed an excuse before. But the Jerusalem Post points out that the strike may actually bolster Israeli security by making Palestinian terrorists more insecure:

The new blessing for Palestinian leaders like Shehadeh is: "May Allah bless and keep you far away from us."

A Palestinian journalist who lives less than a kilometer from Shehadeh's wrecked apartment, told The Jerusalem Post that "people are now looking for wanted men. They are stopping them in the middle of the street and will now begin asking for their identification before they enter a specific residential neighborhood. This is wrenching and most people think--do I have to stop them--but no one feels safe. How do you know who will be Shehadeh's number two, and where the missile will come from?"

According to the journalist, who for security purposes asked to remain anonymous, this kind of scrutiny even occurs at parties and gatherings among friends.

Must Be BBC Listeners
"A faction of the Fatah is threatening to target senior Israeli government and army officials, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon," the Jerusalem Post reports. Fatah is Yasser Arafat's political movement.

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Any bets on how long he'll live if Fatah actually tries to carry out these threats?

Ha'aretz reports Israel has arrested an 18-year-old Palestinian who "said that he had recently been recruited by Fatah militants" to carry out an attack on Hasidic Jews who pray at Joseph's Tomb, a Jewish holy site in the West Bank city of Nablus. As the Jerusalem Post reported in 2000, a Palestinian mob destroyed the tomb itself, showing what they think of religious pluralism.

Palestinian terrorists murdered another four Israelis, including a teenager, in two shootings south of the West Bank city of Hebron, the Associated Press reports.

Pro Bono Editing

"Palestinian gunmen shot dead a Jewish rabbi settler Thursday in what militants called the first response to an Israeli air strike that killed 15 Palestinians including a top militant."--Reuters dispatch, July 25, 9:35 a.m. EDT

"A 'Jewish rabbi settler'? He settles Jewish rabbis? So who settles the non-Jewish rabbis?"--Best of the Web Today, July 25, 2:26 p.m. EDT

"Palestinians shot dead a rabbi from a Jewish settlement in the West Bank on Thursday in what militants called the first response to an Israeli air strike that killed 15 Palestinians, including a top militant."--Reuters dispatch, July 25, 3:09 p.m. EDT

Love Me or Leave Me
President Truman is said to have wished for a "one-handed economist"--someone who wouldn't answer every question with "on the one hand . . ." and "on the other hand . . ." Judge Leonie Brinkema, presiding over the Zacarias Moussaoui trial, must be wishing for a one-handed terrorist. The fickle Frenchman tried to plead guilty yesterday, but when Brinkema informed him that this entailed actually admitting to the crime, he said: "By my obligation toward my creator, Allah, to save my life and to defend my life, I have to withdraw my guilty plea." Moussaoui mavens can read the transcript here.

Great Moments in Law Enforcement
OK, maybe there is a need for all that talk about the need to respect Muslim sensibilities. "A Secret Service agent has admitted he scrawled anti-Muslim statements on a prayer calendar during the home search of a man charged with smuggling bogus checks into the United States," the Associated Press reports.

Abdullah Shishani, brother of suspect Omar Shishani, "said he and his wife found that 'Islam is Evil' and 'Christ is King' had been written on the prayer calendar attached to the refrigerator" at Abdullah's Dearborn, Mich., home, where Omar had been staying. The Secret Service won't identify the agent, who is on leave pending an investigation and "could be fired."

INS Gives In
Sept. 11 widow Deena Gibney, a British national whose two children are U.S. citizens by birth, will be allowed to stay in America after all, the BBC reports. "The 39-year-old, who lives in New Jersey, has now been granted a green card by immigration authorities allowing her to stay and work in the US."

Stupidity Watch
In an interview with London's Independent, actor Peter Ustinov expresses his admiration for terrorists:

The outspoken UNICEF ambassador, quibbling with George W. Bush's description of Palestinian bombers as "cowardly": "They require the kind of courage that none of us would have. It's a kind of courage that's very hard to understand. And it's our duty to try to understand it because it is the courage of desperation. And what is the difference between somebody who goes into a coffee house with the intention of killing as many people as possible--and does so--and somebody who's in an aeroplane at the height of five miles, unobtainable by any anti-aircraft gun, and lets their bombs drop as scientifically as possible, in order to kill as few people as possible? . . ."

This is not only stupid but unoriginal; erstwhile ABC talk-show host Bill Maher said virtually the same thing.

Burkha Barbie
In an unsigned but first-person article on The Islamic Garden Web site, a Muslim mom describes a doll's religious conversion:

My parents bought a Barbie as a gift for my daughter: not just any Barbie but a Princess Barbie, complete with a pink sequinned ballroom gown, shiny jewelry and all the trimmings. Needless to say, my daughter loved it.

Within seconds, however, the questions started about the doll's low-cut, sleeveless dress. Why is her chest showing? Why aren't her arms covered? As Muslims, we have always taken care to teach our children about modest dress for men and women both and I could see the wheels spinning in my daughter's head as she began to suspect that this doll did not reflect a proper image of Islamic modesty. She herself does not wear short sleeves so I was not surprised at all to see her concerned about her new doll. Not exactly sure how to react without over-reacting, my son saved me with a question of his own: Where's this doll's hijab [headscarf]? . . .

And that's what gave me the idea to transform Barbie into a Muslim woman. Within minutes, I found a piece of material which I sewed in order to make a long, free-flowing hijab which served to conceal the doll's hair as well as her shapely figure. Her chest was no longer exposed and suddenly Barbie had a completely different look. My daughter really loved this and said we should name this new Muslima Fatimah, the name of her best friend. She then took Fatimah and began playing with her, taking care to keep her hijab in place as she introduced her new friend to her other toys and dolls.

The Pearl School
Temple B'nai Shalom, a Reform synagogue in East Brunswick, N.J., is naming its Hebrew school after Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was murdered by Muslim terrorists in Pakistan earlier this year, the Associated Press reports. "The school will also add courses on tolerance and music and an annual Daniel Pearl Lecture."

A Conspiracy of Ivy
The Black Commentator has an interview with Rep. Earl Hilliard, the Israel-hating Alabama Democrat who lost his seat to Artur Davis in last month's Democratic primary. Hilliard is a graduate of the mostly black Howard Law School, while Davis went to Harvard Law, and Hilliard thinks this is significant:

You ask if there is a conspiracy. Yes and no. White folks know what Blacks they can use to turn against other Blacks. That is the reason why the person that replaced Gus Savage [former Rep-IL] was from Yale, the person that replaced me was from Harvard, the person that replaced Craig Washington [former Rep-TX] was from Yale, the person they are trying to replace Cynthia McKinney with is from Princeton [actually Yale], the persons that they tried with Ed Towns and Bobby Rush were Harvard. . . .

These people are different, philosophically, from other people in the Black community. They are Black enough to get support from the Black community, but they are philosophically "right" enough--and I mean, to the Right--to get the support of the white community. So, that makes them just right. And they are being sought after by these groups that wish to create a new order.

For years we've been hearing how important it is to get black students into America's finest universities. Now it turns out, at least according to Hilliard, that blacks who go to Ivy League schools are no longer "authentic" because those institutions are such bastions of right-wing opinion (!). Here we have a black congressman from Alabama arguing for educational segregation, sounding for all the world like an old-style Dixiecrat.

The Judges vs. the Scouts
"A fundamental part of being a judicial officer" is "avoiding even the appearance of partiality at all times," Angela Bradstreet, who heads the Bar Association of San Francisco, tells the San Francisco Chronicle. Her idea of "impartiality" is to force all judges to take sides on an issue of public controversy--namely, the Boy Scouts' ban on open homosexuals--in defiance of the Supreme Court's First Amendment jurisprudence:

In response to a resolution in January from the local bar association, San Francisco Superior Court judges and commissioners adopted a policy July 11 saying they would not take part in any organization that "discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation by excluding members on the grounds that their sexual orientation renders them 'unclean,' 'immoral' or 'unfit.' "

In practice, the policy prohibits the judges from taking part in the Boy Scouts. Statewide ethical standards for judges, adopted by the state Supreme Court in 1995, forbid membership in organizations that discriminate against lesbians and gays but exempt "nonprofit youth organizations," an exception designed for the Boy Scouts.

After the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Boy Scouts' right to set its own membership rules, Judge James Lambden of San Francisco resigned his position as a scoutmaster and asked the California Supreme Court to force all the state's judges to do the same. The court refused, but Lambden now gets to impose his views at least on his fellow Franciscans. Why exactly do they call this "liberalism" again?

How Many Arms Does This Economist Have?
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman opines that the recent stock-market declines make this a bad time to reform Social Security: "Now more than ever we need institutions that provide a safety net for the middle class. Yet George W. Bush still wants to party like it's 1999. On Wednesday he insisted that he continued to favor partially privatizing Social Security."

Krugman is supposedly an economist; hasn't he ever heard of "buy low, sell high"?

Professional Courtesy?
"Surgeons have managed to stitch back a Moroccan boy's penis after it was bitten off by a donkey," Reuters reports. But the British wire service's sympathies seem to lie with the ass rather than the boy. "Donkeys in Morocco are used for laborious work on farms and garbage collection and are often subject to harsh treatment," the dispatch notes.

You Don't Say
"Pope Urges Pilgrims to Reject Sin"--headline, Associated Press dispatch, July 25

Not Ready for Prime Time
Sen. John McCain will host "Saturday Night Live" in October, the Arizona Republic reports. Is it really a good idea for "SNL" to have a senator as a guest host? After all, the host gets to do a monologue, and the show is only 90 minutes long.

Not Too Brite--III
Here's yet another "oddly enough" item from Reuters: "A Texas dentist has been charged with killing her orthodontist husband by repeatedly running over him with her Mercedes Benz, police say."

Patently Ridiculous
On March 26, 2002, Ross Eugene Long III received U.S. Patent No. 6,360,693 for "an apparatus for use as a toy by an animal, for example a dog, to either fetch carry or chew includes a main section with at least one protrusion extending therefrom that resembles a branch in appearance. The toy is formed of any of a number of materials including rubber, plastic, or wood including wood composites and is solid. It is either rigid or flexible."

That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the inventor of the stick!

Two Candles
If the guys at the Arab News find us hard to take now, just wait till Monday. That's when we begin the terrible twos. That's right, Sunday marks the second anniversary of the launch of OpinionJournal and Best of the Web Today. For a taste of the past, check out the first Best of the Web column. Written mostly by Ira Stoll (then uncredited), now managing editor of the upstart New York Sun, it ran 602 words and had 18 links, of which 10 still work.

We've added links at the bottom to the first day's lineup of articles, many of which looked ahead to the Republican National Convention the following week. Seth Lipsky, now Stoll's boss at the Sun, looks particularly prescient two years later; he urged then-Gov. Bush to embrace the goal of Palestinian democracy.

(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ron Mechsner, David Scarbrough, Xavier Basora, David Hines, Darren Gold, Irene Margolin-Katz, Eric Krangel, Mara Gold, Brian Kukla, S.E. Brenner, Brian Dawson, Michael Morley, Cari Valentine, Dennis Bray, Gordon Crovitz, David Levene, Erik Fortune, Robert Owen, RiShawn Biddle, Randy Schwartz, John Vecchione, Jacqueline Albertson, Kevin Sweeney, Amy Powell, Peter Ingemi, Edwin Kehm, Rosanne Klass, Carl Sherer, Michael Segal, Yehuda Hilewitz, Tom Elia, Aaron Rosenbaum, C.E. Dobkin, Gershon Dubin, Damian Bennett, Robert LeChevalier, Phil Bowermaster, Raghu Desikan, Daniel Goldstein, Troy Taylor, Mike Breeland, Andrew Solovay, H.J. Farmer, Van Wallach, Robert Salmon, David Smith and John Moran. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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